City of gold : Dubai and the dream of capitalism

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Title:

City of gold : Dubai and the dream of capitalism

Author:

Krane, Jim.

ISBN:

9780312655433

Edition:

1st Picador ed.

Publication Information:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2010.

Physical Description:

xii, 358 p., [8] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 25 cm.

Contents:

Foreword -- Part 1: Dubai Stirs -- 1: Sands of time -- 2: Free port grows in the desert -- 3: Oil, slaves, and rebellion -- Part 2: Dubai Emerges -- 4: It's Sheikh Rashid's world-we just live in it -- 5: Road to dominance -- 6: Sprinting the marathon -- 7: Almost famous -- 8: Spreading out and going up -- 9: Diamonds, Dubai, and Israel -- 10: Sheikh Mohammed: born to rule -- Part 3: Blowback: The Downside -- 11: Labor pains -- 12: Sex and slavery -- 13: Air-conditioned nightmare -- 14: Lawless roads -- Part 4: Dubai's Challenge -- 15: Danger ahead -- 16: Democracy and terrorism -- 17: Stuck between America and Iran -- 18: Meaning of Dubai -- Epilogue: Dubai, February 2010 -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index.

Subject Term:

Capitalism -- United Arab Emirates -- Dubayy (Emirate)

Geographic Term:

Dubayy (United Arab Emirates : Emirate) -- History.

Dubayy (United Arab Emirates : Emirate) -- Economic conditions -- 21st century.

Summary:

From the Publisher: The city of Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates, is everything the Arab world isn't: a freewheeling capitalist oasis where the market rules and history is swept aside. Until the credit crunch knocked it flat, Dubai was the fastest-growing city in the world, with a roaring economy that outpaced China's while luring more tourists than all of India. It's one of the world's safest places, a stone's throw from its most dangerous. In City of Gold, Jim Krane, who reported for the AP from Dubai, brings us a boots-on-the-ground look at this fascinating place by walking its streets, talking to its business titans, its prostitutes, and the hard-bitten men who built its fanciful skyline. He delves into the city's history, paints an intimate portrait of the ruling Maktoum family, and ponders where the city is headed. Dubai literally came out of nowhere. It was a poor and dusty village in the 1960s. Now it's been transformed into the quintessential metropolis of the future through the vision of clever sheikhs, Western capitalists, and a river of investor money that poured in from around the globe. What has emerged is a tolerant and cosmopolitan city awash in architectural landmarks, luxury resorts, and Disneyfied kitsch. It's at once home to America's most prestigious companies and universities and a magnet for the Middle East's intelligentsia. Dubai's dream of capitalism has also created a deeply stratified city that is one of the world's worst polluters. Wild growth has clogged its streets and left its citizens a tiny minority in a sea of foreigners. Jim Krane considers all of this and casts a critical eye on the toll that the global economic downturn has taken on a place that many tout as a blueprint for a more stable Middle East. While many think Dubai's glory days have passed, insiders like Jim Krane who got to know the city and its creators firsthand realize there's much more to come in the City of Gold, a place that, in just a few years, has made itself known to nearly every person on earth.

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	953.57 KRA	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Award-winning journalist Jim Krane charts the history of Dubai from its earliest days, considers the influence of the family who has ruled it since the nineteenth century, and looks at the effect of the global economic downturn on a place that many tout as a blueprint for a more stable Middle East

The city of Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates, is everything the Arab world isn't: a freewheeling capitalist oasis where the market rules and history is swept aside. Until the credit crunch knocked it flat, Dubai was the fastest-growing city in the world, with a roaring economy that outpaced China's while luring more tourists than all of India. It's one of the world's safest places, a stone's throw from its most dangerous.

In City of Gold, Jim Krane, who reported for the AP from Dubai, brings us a boots-on-the-ground look at this fascinating place by walking its streets, talking to its business titans, its prostitutes, and the hard-bitten men who built its fanciful skyline. He delves into the city's history, paints an intimate portrait of the ruling Maktoum family, and ponders where the city is headed.

Dubai literally came out of nowhere. It was a poor and dusty village in the 1960s. Now it's been transformed into the quintessential metropolis of the future through the vision of clever sheikhs, Western capitalists, and a river of investor money that poured in from around the globe. What has emerged is a tolerant and cosmopolitan city awash in architectural landmarks, luxury resorts, and Disnified kitsch. It's at once home to America's most prestigious companies and universities and a magnet for the Middle East's intelligentsia.

Dubai's dream of capitalism has also created a deeply stratified city that is one of the world's worst polluters. Wild growth has clogged its streets and left its citizens a tiny minority in a sea of foreigners. Jim Krane considers all of this and casts a critical eye on the toll that the global economic downturn has taken.

While many think Dubai's glory days have passed, insiders like Jim Krane who got to know the city and its creators firsthand realize there's much more to come in the City of Gold, a place that, in just a few years, has made itself known to nearly every person on earth.

Author Notes

Jim Krane, an award-winning journalist, was the AP's Persian Gulf Correspondent, responsible for coverage in all six Gulf Arab countries. He has also written about Dubai for The Economist and the Financial Times. Previously, he was an AP Baghdad Correspondent and New York--based business writer. He lives in Cambridge, England, with his wife and son.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The modern city-state of Dubai exists largely because two men willed it so. Through a combination of prescient investment of resources, grandiose vision and the freedoms of absolute rule, the late Sheikh Rashid and his son (and current ruler) Sheikh Mohammed transformed the backwater village into a global powerhouse "erupting onto the earth." Mohammed's "ideas are so stamped on the landscape that two of his poems are being written on the sea as a group of [artificial] islands." Dubai-based journalist Krane does a superb job of conveying the near-manic atmosphere swirling around the creation of the world's tallest building (half a mile high), first indoor ski slope (in a mall) and-incidentally-the world's largest carbon footprint, revealing the creativity and tolerance that characterize a city where 95% of its residents are foreigners, as well as the inevitable costs of such lavish ambition. Environmental needs have been ignored (another island was built atop a coral reserve, and migrant laborers and sex workers face routine abuse and exploitation. A fascinating study of a small nation that has taken the ideas of modernization and capitalism to their outer limits. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Dubai, the most populous of the seven United Arab Emirates, is one of the world's fastest growing cities. What was once just a mud village on the edge of a vast desert has grown into one of the most dazzling and luxurious cities the world has ever known. Like much of the Mideast, Dubai was built on the back of the oil trade, but the embrace of free-market capitalism and diversification into tourism has kept the growth booming until recent times. While the Western world and the international business community have focused on Dubai in all its glamour, little has been disseminated about its origins until now. Krane charts the history of the tribal ruling class, and sheds light on the underlying problems that have resulted from building this metropolis on a desert: wasteful consumption of resources, a terrible environmental record, dependence on luxury tourism in a global recession, and the legal status of workforce immigrants are just some of the challenges Dubai faces. Krane was the AP Persian Gulf correspondent and business writer, and lives in Dubai.--Siegfried, David Copyright 2009 Booklist

Kirkus Review

The history of the Persian Gulf's most prosperous city. With its extraordinary wealth, towering skyscrapers and hedonistic ways, Dubai has emerged as a major financial center and the world's most cosmopolitan and tolerant city, writes Krane, a Dubai-based AP correspondent. In workmanlike prose, he details the city's past as an insular village in a distant corner of Arabia, its early relations with Western traders and its transformation as part of the United Arab Emirates into an international tourist destination. The 175 years of stable rule by the Maktoum dynasty has been fundamental to the city's commercial success, says the author. Now guided by the wealthy 60-year-old monarch and strategic planner Sheikh Mohammed, Dubai has leveraged its strengthsa small native population, proximity to oil and an enlightened ruling classto become "the Middle East's capital of commerce." It boasts 350 luxury hotels (cheapest room at the iconic Burj Al Arab: $2,000), tax-free business zones (Internet City, Media City, etc.) and man-made islands like Palm Jumeirah, which houses an office tower twice as tall as the Empire State Building and the 1,200-shop Dubai Mall. In its relentless quest for modernityelectricity became widely available, and slavery was banned, in the 1960sthe city has attracted an unusually mixed population of two million (95 percent foreigners, from 200 countries). Indians bring much of the brainpower while construction workers from many nations provide brawn and live ascetic lives in desert labor camps. Krane portrays a boomtown of contrasts, where older residents who sign documents with a thumbprint have children with doctorates; and where average male citizens, who receive $55,000-per-year subsidies and $19,000 toward wedding costs, have a 20 percent unemployment rate. The epilogue explains how the global recession has sharply curtailedat least for nowthe frenetic growth of this key U.S. ally and spy center. Building roads and skyscrapers was the easy part, writes Krane. "Incubating an enlightened society will be harder." A fact-crammed report on a culture of excess. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

A former Baghdad correspondent for the Associated Press who has lived in Dubai, Krane traces the historical roots and economic and political changes of "a small Arab village that grew into a big city" and profiles the members of the ruling royal family-Sheikh Rashid, Sheikh Zayed, and Sheikh Mohammed-whose vision brought Dubai to where it is today. Krane also examines such aspects of life in Dubai as security and terrorism, the economy, immigration, the dangers of the highways for cars and pedestrians, the construction industry, and the real-estate boom. There has been a downside to the rapid advancement in Dubai, says Krane: "Lives were trampled by the city's growth. Greed eclipsed common sense. The old ways were lost never to return." The author, who bases much of his research on interviews, includes extensive bibliographical notes. Verdict This landmark work is recommended to those interested in the history, politics, and economics of the Middle East; an excellent choice for anyone who wishes to learn more about Dubai.-Lucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpts

""City of Gold" offers a vivid guide to how a Bedouin tribe turned a mud village on a scrap of desert into a glittering city state."--Bloomberg "This landmark work is recommended to those interested in the history, politics, and economics of the Middle East; an excellent choice for anyone who wishes to learn more about Dubai."--Library Journal "The modern city-state of Dubai exists largely because two men willed it so. Through a combination of prescient investment of resources, grandiose vision and the freedoms of absolute rule, the late Sheikh Rashid and his son (and current ruler) Sheikh Mohammed transformed the backwater village into a global powerhouse "erupting onto the earth." Mohammed's "ideas are so stamped on the landscape that two of his poems are being written on the sea as a group of [artificial] islands." Dubai-based journalist Krane does a superb job of conveying the near-manic atmosphere swirling around the creation of the world's tallest building (half a mile high), first indoor ski slope (in a mall) and--incidentally--the world's largest carbon footprint, revealing the creativity and tolerance that characterize a city where 95% of its residents are foreigners, as well as the inevitable costs of such lavish ambition. Environmental needs have been ignored (another island was built atop a coral reserve, and migrant laborers and sex workers face routine abuse and exploitation. A fascinating study of a small nation that has taken the ideas of modernization and capitalism to their outer limits."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "The author hits his stride when he assesses Dubai's current ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. He proceeds to examine this small emirate with admirable even-handedness and good humour. But Krane also writes movingly of the conditions of the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers who have built Dubai."--The Atlantic "The history of a little Emirate's epic transformation, from an impoverished pearling enclave, to the shining city on the hill, is revealed in full detail. Jim Krane is a great reporter, whose journalistic credentials are brought to bear in this unique work that is infused with facts, ample history, emotion and stunning narratives. He leads his audience into the nooks and crannies of the "unknown" Dubai, to reveal the humanity and intrigue that pulsates beneath the surface. He shows how powerful persons with a global reach collaborated to build an economic gem out of the desert. This is a fast-moving Arabian tale, but very much a modern one; not only laden with facts, it is a guidebook and cautionary tale for other developing nations in their quest to rapidly achieve the Western dream."-- Justin Dargin, Harvard University - author of Desert Dreams and The Dolphin Project: The Development of a Gulf Gas Initiative "Dubai is fortunate to have as skilled and passionate a chronicler as Jim Krane. The city leaps off these pages with panache, brassiness, splendor and suffering. There is no better book about Dubai, and there may never be." --Jon Alterman, Director of the Middle East Program at CSIS and author of The Vital Triangle: China, The United States and The Middle East "How did one of the planet's last unexplored wastelands, for millennia ignored by history, become in just a few short decades the playground of the unimaginably rich? In City of Gold, Jim Krane traces the fascinating and long overlooked history of Dubai, from pirate battles and eccentric British explorers to the glittering spires of a metropolis that emerged from nowhere, in prose as spare and enchanting as a desert fairy tale."--James Hider, author of The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War and Mideast correspondent The Times of London "A marvelous book. Beautifully written! Jim Krane has written a fascinating account of a Middle East we rarely get to hear about. Jim Krane's book on Dubai's rise and fall -- in this era of global financial crisis -- is a cautionary tale for us all."--Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR Middle East Correspondent Excerpted from City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism by Jim Krane All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Preface	p. xi
Part I Dubai Stirs	p. 1
1 The Sands of Time	p. 3
2 Birth of a Free Port	p. 21
3 Oil, Slaves, and Rebellion	p. 39
Part II Dubai Emerges	p. 63
4 It's Sheikh Rashid's World-We Just Live in It	p. 65
5 The Road to Dominance	p. 81
6 Sprinting the Marathon	p. 103
7 Almost Famous	p. 135
8 Spreading Out and Going Up	p. 151
9 Diamonds, Dubai, and Israel	p. 167
10 Sheikh Mohammed: Born to Rule	p. 177
Part III Blowback: The Downside	p. 197
11 Labor Pains	p. 199
12 Sex and Slavery	p. 213
13 The Air-Conditioned Nightmare	p. 223
14 The Lawless Roads	p. 233
Part IV Dubai's Challenge	p. 251
15 Danger Ahead	p. 253
16 Democracy and Terrorism	p. 271
17 Stuck Between America and Iran	p. 283
18 The Meaning of Dubai	p. 297
Epilogue: Dubai, February 2010	p. 315
Notes	p. 321
Acknowledgments	p. 345
Index	p. 347

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

Kirkus Review

Library Journal Review

Excerpts

Excerpts

Table of Contents

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